Dear Readers (yes, all two of you (That includes myself)) … Where was I?

Oh yes!

Dear Readers,

In my ever continuing search for excellence, I am looking for a Jackons Professional to complement my collection. I currently own a Jackson Professional Fusion EX and a Jackson Professional of which not even the people at Jackson know what type it is.

I’m looking for another standard Jackson Professional. It has to be a professional, preferably a Japanese one. So it cannot be “made in Korea”, and cannot be “made in India”. It has to be a professional, not a Jackson US. I have my very own very peculiar reason for this. It has to have 24 frets, preferably a dark colour (no airbrush or custom design, please!). Standard pickups with all springs attached (That should be 3). Usual wear and tear is okay. It has to be a Superstrat model - so no Flying V, no Kelly, no Warrior, no Angel and also no Charvel. Yes, I know, Charvel = Jackson but in a way that the very expensive Squiers = the very cheap Fenders.

Thank you.

Kristof

Yesterday, I completely had it. I wanted to exercise a particulary troublesome guitar part by entering it through MIDI, then play along while gradually increasing the speed.

So, I connected the Yamaha keyboard. It took a while to locate the correct cable while fumbling around under my desk. It was evening so it was almost pitch black under my desk. After eating half a bucket of dust, I located the cable and hooked up my keyboard. I carefully entered and quantized all the notes and played them back through my on-board soundcard. So far, so good.

Next step: hook up my Pod XT Live. After eating the other half bucket of dust, I located the USB cable and hooked up the Pod XT. Of course, I had to restart my sequencing software because I have to shutdown the Pod XT Live ASIO driver when not using it. So, I close Cubase, select the POD XT as the recording device and restart Cubase. Of course, I forgot to activate the ASIO driver for Cubase. So I quit Cubase, reinitialise the ASIO driver and restart Cubase. I can’t send MIDI to the POD as there’s a lot of latency on it. So I tried to send the POD to the PC. No luck. After a while, I decided to disconnect the USB cable and go straight from my POD’s output to the internal sound card. I, of course, forgot to shut down Cubase so my entire PC freezes. Cue reboot of the PC.

Upon restarting Cubase, I found that the output was WAY TOO LOUD! I turned the line-level knob on the POD and found I only had a left channel on my earphones. The convertor to go from jack to mini-jack is a stereo convertor and, of course, I’m using a mono-out on my POD since I only have one instrument cable at home - the rest is in the studio. Also, the volume had to be ridiculously low so I either had the choice of not hearing anything and not blowing up my internal soundcard or hearing what I play while living with the crackling. So, that was no option either.

I ended up listening to the midi file through headphones while carefully trying to hear the sound of my electric guitar being used as an acoustic. Somewhere in between, I fiddled some more and had to reboot my PC two more times because I plugged/unplugged the USB cable that leads to the POD. It took me 1.5 hours and I ended up with nothing except a dry mouth from the dust and a considerably cleaner carpet.

So, I decided to finally go scouting for that USB mixing device I had been wanting to buy for quite a while. I saw a number of them while in France (Lexicon Lambda, Tascam US 122, an EDIROL which I’m not sure of and and M-Audio box). The box I wanted should have

• Midi in and out so I can cut back on the dust-eating;
• Separate left-right jack in, preferably switchable between line-, mic and -10 DB level
• XLR in for microphone or balanced output from another device
• Separate left and right jack out to drive active monitors or an external amp
• Headphone out so I won’t bug my wife or the neighbours at 3 am
• As little latency as possible

After looking at the Lexicon Lambda which is ridiculously overpriced in the Netherlands, checking the M-Audio boxes which did not have all the features I wanted and a number of other boxes which all mentioned “low latency”. There were even a few boxes which advertised that they had “high latency”.

I ended up with the Tascam US144 as the only thing on my shortlist. It advertises “0 latency recording” and the possibility to record 2 channels at 96 Khz which is more than the other in its price-range could say. It should also come with Cubase LE (which I don’t really need but it’s a nice plus). Additionally, the price I got was very good and I should receive it next week. Looking forward to hassle-free plug-and-play recording.

People have asked me to write on how my Shure PGX14 is holding up. I’ve had my first gig with it, and I’ve had it for a while now, so I thought I’d write a review.

First, the bad stuff.

I’ve had some trouble turning the wireless on and off. There’s a trick to it: depress the button for 1 second and let go. It’ll take another second for the thing to come on. Impatient as I am, I kept pressing the button again and again, effectively turning it on and off and on and off again … Also, if you press the button for more than 5 seconds, the device will come on but it’s going to be very hard to turn it off again since pushing the buttong for 5 seconds will put it in “locked” mode which means it won’t respond to the buttons anymore.

I also noticed that you have to check the channel you’re using every time you want to play. On one occasion, I only got a faint signal. After a little research, I found out that the channel I had been using for a couple of rehearsals was somehow getting jammed. Looking for a new channel and synching the beltpack did the trick.

These are the only drawbacks I’ve had. I’ve been able to overcome the “loss of body” problem by simply adjusting the bass and treble setting on my equalizer. I’ve overcome the “less sustain” problem by simply adding a little bit more feedback on the delay I use for my solo-sound. These are problems you’ll have to deal with on any wireless system, even on those twice or thrice as expensive as the PGX14.

Second, the good stuff.

Playing wireless is incredible. No more fuzzing around with cables. No more looking around after a jump. No more getting your foot caught in a cable, or your cable caught underneath a wah or volume pedal.

I’ve played the set for one month now + 1 gig which comes to a total of approximately 19 hours. So far, I’ve had only two sets of batteries in the pack. I switched the second pack way before the indicator on the beltpack told me, “just to be on the safe side”. The advertised “8 hours on a battery” is certainly not a marketing stunt. The batteries I use are “el cheapo” sets. I bought a pack of 10 for 4 euro at a gaz station and I expected them to only last a few hours.

Conclusion: this is a hassle-free (dont’forget to RTFM) and very good wireless set. It’s not the cheapest set but as a UFH diversity set, it’s not expensive. If it broke, I’d cry a lot, save a lot then buy the same set again.

Some while ago, I visited Piens in Belgium. They were literally spamming me with e-mails, going on about how low their prices were, how they were having a giant sale and all prices were even lower than usual. They also boasted about how competent their staff is and that all staff are experts in their area.

So, in my blissful ignorance, I write them back and ask if they are having Sennheiser EW-172 or Shure PGX-14 or systems of similar quality in stock. “Yes”, they answered.

So I made my way to Belgium. The place is big but not huge. Musik Produktiv in Germany is about three, maybe four times their size. Once inside, nothing was on sale. There were the usual offers, but nothing was really on sale. As a matter of fact, most everything was more expensive than it is in the Netherlands.

I started looking for wireless guitar systems, but all systems were either crappy (low-end AKG stuff, Samson “dont’ get me started on these” Arline and the likes) or ridiculously expensive. So, off I go to an “expert” staff member that was hanging around in the guitar section. “Do you have any UHF Diversity or True Diversity wireless systems on sale?” I asked the guy. “Oh sure …” I was excited! I must have overlooked something!

*buzzer* WRONG! I didn’t overlook anything. The staff member just didn’t have a clue as to what “UHF” meant. He pointed me to some cheapo VHF-sets. “No, these are VHF, I’m looking for UHF” on which I got redirected to the Samson Airline sets.

I told him that I had gotten confirmation that they would have Sennheiser EW or Sure PGX systems in stock or on sale. He gave me that empty look. That look people give you when their brain has given up on trying to understand all that technical mambo-jambo. This guy was retreating to his happy place and, apparently, I wasn’t part of it. The guy shrugged and walked away. I am never going back there again.

In the end, I bought the Shure PGX-14 online. They had just dropped in price in the Netherlands and I wanted it.

I’ve been playing it for four rehearsals now and it’s simply amazing. If you move away too far (read: walking away about 100m) there will be some delay in the signal. The sound is very very good. There was a slight mid-boost and some drop in the extremities of the scale, but nothing that couldn’t be solved by the EQ on my Pod XT Live. The biggest setback is loss of sustain. It’s not much, but since I already had a very strict noise-gate setup, sounds would get cut off too early. I tweaked the noise-gate on the Pod and everything was just dandy again.

What’s more: the belt pack has been running for about 8 hours now and still doesn’t seem about to give up. Then again, there isn’t a single gig that would last for more than 2 hours, so a set of rechargeable batteries should do the trick.

I’m really happy with this acquisition. I can highly recommend this. It’s about 10-15% cheaper than the Sennheiser sets and it’s got at least comparable quality.

A very quick and rather short update this time. The SHS-200 I wrote about in my previous update is now sitting on my dining table. My parents came by on Sunday and took the thing with them. Thanks, mom and dad!

The keys are a lot smaller than I remembered them to be, but that is not a bad thing. I still had a MIDI to GAME cable lying around which I previously used to connect my Line6 Flextone II XL to my PC. I hooked the keyboard to my PC, turned the power on and … voila! Instant drums.

What’s also nice: the keyboard has an “auto chord” and “single finger chord” setting. The beauty is that, when I choose the “single finger chord” setting, I can play a complete chord with one finger. The bigger beauty is that it also sends out a complete chord through MIDI. Hah! Cheating has never been more easy.

I’ve been in the market for a MIDI controller. I decided that, if I really wanted to record entire songs at home, I was going to need a MIDI controller.

A MIDI controller would allow me to place subtle strings under a songs. It also means I would be saved from the tedious task of clicking a drumtrack together, beat by beat (pun intended).

So, off I went for a MIDI controller hunt. As usual, I started checking the internet. I found a lot of controllers, ranging from some 50 USD to well over 1000 USD. I checked Ebay, I checked the local used-goods websites and I checked the cheap-with-disappointingly-expensive-shipping webstores. It all boiled down to the same thing: a simple controller is cheap, afterwards you pay for every little but of luxury you want added, like, say, more than 24 keys.

Then it struck me: my brother, as a little kid, had a synthesizer which might very well have had a midi-out. So I rang up my parents and my brother and, sure enough, my parents still had it lying around, and my brother hadn’t even looked at the thing for years. So, very soon, I will be the proud second owner of a spanking Yamaha SHS-200.

It has 4 full octaves (52 keys - count ‘em) and a lot more. The sound is rather terrible, but it has a MIDI-out which is what I need. It’s also a bit of Eighties nostalgia. It’s smaller cousin, the SHS-10 is reaching prices as high as 150 USD on the internet. And that one has less keys and less options.

So, yes, I’m very happy. Now there’s only one slight problem: getting it here

• as fast as possible;
• as cheap as possible;
• in as little a number of pieces as possible (1 would be fantastic).

Next stop: a firewire-based mixer.